Toronto film festival: a feast of stars

Toronto film festival: a feast of stars

This year's Toronto film festival was graced not only by Julie Christie in a headscarf, George Clooney's bandaged hand and Keanu Reeves pretending to be Jesus, but by private dinners with Mary J Blige, Bill Clinton and Sarah Ferguson. Wish you'd been there?

Fresh from picking up the best actor award at Venice, Colin Firth rolls into Canada to plug his role in Tom Ford's A Single Man. But this movie lies. Off-screen, Firth is not A Single Man and shockingly lets this slip by showing up with his Significant Other (aka Livia Guiggioli)

No festival would be complete without an appearance from Jesus. And here He is, sent down to work the crowds in the flesh-and-blood form of an actor named Keanu Reeves and duly preaching the gospel according to Hollywood outside the screening of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Make way for Nicolas Cage, the star of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Werner Herzog's wild remake of the old Abel Ferrara film also stars a pair of iguanas. The iguanas, sad to say, did not attend the red carpet premiere

The festival experience takes its toll on us all. Specifically, Toronto has taken its toll on George Clooney, who swanned into town to promote The Men Who Stare at Goats ... and left it with his right hand swaddled in bandages after slamming it in a car door. The upside is that his hand is insured for an estimated $250m dollars

For good measure, Toronto also gives us funny celebrities striking curious poses. Here we see Ed Norton with his thumb in the air. This essentially translates as: "Hey, it's all good. Everyone be cool. Chill out for Christ's sake"

And here we have Robin Penn Wright pushing her finger against her nose. Leastways we hope it's her finger. The only other alternative is that some random woman has just marched up and jabbed her in the face. And how rude would that have been?

So, in conclusion: this year's Toronto film festival offers a star-spangled spread of bandaged hands and baseball caps and offensive women who might conceivably have just walked up out of nowhere and poked a famous actor in the face. But it is also about food and private dinners, where they turn away the riff-raff and hand not one plate but two to the likes of Sarah Ferguson. Now be honest: don't you wish you'd been invited?